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It has been a bittersweet New Year here in Asia.

Just over 2 weeks ago on 16 December, a 23-year-old physiotherapy student was brutally gang-raped on a moving bus, in India’s capital of New Delhi. Thirteen torturous days later, after being airlifted to Singapore for medical help, she died.

All over India and neighboring countries, the outrage is palpable. Public demonstrations question why the world’s largest democracy has failed to protect its women.

As India’s economic success story makes headlines, the nation's bright, independent women have played a large part in the rise of the Tiger. Kiran Mazumdar Shaw and Indu Jain are some of the best-known names of female successes on the subcontinent. But in recent times, women everywhere across India are breaking the cycle of getting married in their late teens or early twenties and instead getting jobs. In the past, education was abandoned for homemaking, but in the last decade, the number of female college degree earners has risen steadily.

Today’s modern educated Indian woman living in a metropolis is not unlike one you would find in New York City. She can tell the difference between Chanel and Louis Vuitton. She gets her coffee from Starbucks and clothes from Zara. She most likely has a Smartphone which she uses to Tweet and post on Facebook. But the major difference between this woman in India and one in the U.S. is the shocking statistic she lives with – a woman in India is raped every 20 minutes, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. This isn't sexual violence in villages, but in public places in developed cities, as this recent incident showed. Most rapes remain unreported for fear of stigma or family rejection. Of the few that are reported, conviction is unusual.

Unfortunately this case is neither isolated, nor the most brutal the nation has seen. So why did it cause such a stir? The 23-year-old victim was returning home after watching “Life of Pi” with a male friend, in an urban area of New Delhi. She could have been any woman, not unlike you and I. Unexpectedly, urbanization and education is creating a further divide between the sexes.

The rise of women's independence has threatened men’s masculinity and led to these vicious attacks, states Ratna Kapur in this Op-Ed column in The Hindu:

The grooming of young men to have a feeling of entitlement by Indian parents breeds a sense of masculinity and male privilege. Son preference simultaneously erodes the possibility of respect for women, as girls are seen as unwanted or burdensome. Such inequalities produce the very hatred against women in the public arena that we are witnessing throughout the country. When women do not cower or display their vulnerability — thereby inviting the protection of the virile Indian male — what follows is a sense of emasculation and aggrievement on the part of these men.

Stepping out in professional attire, women face eve-teasing, lewd looks, groping or molestation, even in cities like Mumbai and Delhi. As the number of educated, high-earning women rise, so does risks to their safety.

Solutions to the brutality have been disappointing. One priest suggested Indian women should cover themselves completely (such as donning the Islamic burqa) to prevent rape. The belief that women are to blame for sexual violence because they entice men, is pervasive at all levels of society. Indian women are discriminated right from the womb – where sons are so preferred that finding out the sex of a baby was outlawed in India, after a rise in abortions of female fetuses.

This tragedy has shocked the nation, and highlighted that despite India’s economic accomplishments, safety for women still lags far behind. Men and women are calling for justice to be served in the recent case, even pushing for capital punishment for the rapists. However, without a fundamental change in the cultural mindset – the belief that women deserve to be educated and have a right to pursue professional careers – any justice would be in vain.